UCN and Knowlagent Announce Strategic Alliance Designed to Transform Enterprise Contact Centers from Reactive Cost Centers to Proactive Value Contributors
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UCN's off-premises contact center suite to offer just-in-time learning for contact center agents
SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 9 / -- UCN, Inc. (BULLETIN BOARD: UCNN) , the leading provider of all-in-one, off-premises contact center software, and Knowlagent, the leader in on-demand, agent hiring, eLearning, communications and coaching software, announced a strategic alliance to release an integrated product focused on improving the skill and performance levels of the contact center agent.
"The most significant challenge service executives face is transitioning their operations from cost centers to profit centers capable of upselling and retaining customers. The key to this transition is knowing when and how to train their people," explains Paul Jarman, CEO of UCN. "Knowlagent has developed this ability and is delivering this service to an impressive list of customers. The combination of our two industry leading products will create a powerful agent improvement solution that most service executives do not have cost effective access to today."
A 2007 Raymond James Equity Research Report on Customer Interaction Management (CIM) estimates the performance optimization market size at $1 billion and growing at 10-15 percent, with the eLearning segment alone estimated at $180 million per year, growing at 15-20 percent. Performance Optimization includes call recording, workforce scheduling, performance management, analytics and e-Learning. With this announcement, UCN will now provide products into all elements of the performance optimization category.
Companies are just scratching the surface in terms of using the contact center to improve the creation and retention of revenue. A 2006 McKinsey & Company Quarterly article entitled, Using Call Centers to Boost Revenue, emphasized that companies fail to tap the full revenue potential of their call centers because they don't understand the extent of the opportunity. According to Matt McConnell, co-founder and President of Knowlagent, "because of increasing competitiveness among businesses, companies are now looking to drive value and wallet share from existing customers. The contact center is a great mechanism for doing that."
The combination of the inContact® family of products and the Knowlagent family of products has clear synergies for improving the agent lifecycle in contact centers including hiring, initial training, ongoing training and communications, as well as coaching and performance management.
The new integrated solution is based on real-time data transfers between the two companies' products allowing delivery of the right training to the right agent at the right time. The right training content is defined by the continuous customer satisfaction feedback flowing from UCN's award winning real-time survey product, Echo(TM). The right time is "found" through the Knowlagent training engine, which identifies agent down-time from UCN's workforce scheduling and automatic call routing systems, and then pushes a short learning module directly to the agent desktop.
McConnell noted, "This move to value creation in the contact center is the key reason why our relationship with UCN is so strategic and timely."
About Knowlagent
Knowlagent drives value at the frontline of business. The company's products empower clients to address specific performance challenges of those employees who interact daily with customers and represent the external "face" of the organization. This is achieved through four prescriptive solutions that are simple to purchase, digest and implement. Since the Knowlagent Solution was built exclusively for the call center, it integrates seamlessly with existing technologies and specialized work environments to drive the entire business toward extraordinary value. Founded in 1995, Knowlagent is a privately held company headquartered in Alpharetta, Ga. For more information on the company visit http://www.knowlagent.com/.
About UCN, Inc.
UCN (OTCBB: UCNN) is the leading provider of all-in-one, off-premises contact handling services that improve the customer contact experience and the productivity of those handling the contacts. InContact® includes an integrated suite of core contact handling applications, including contact routing, interactive menus, database integration, automated surveys and scoring analysis, reporting, monitoring, recording, administration and workforce scheduling and forecasting applications. InControl(TM) is a unique, rapid application development tool that enables inContact customers to develop highly flexible, customized business contact handling processes in record time. To learn more about UCN visit http://www.ucn.net/.
Source: UCN, Inc.
CONTACT:Jim Elliot, SVP Marketing of UCN, Inc., +1-801-715-5255, jim.elliot@ucn.net; Debbie Qaqish, Vice President of Knowlagent, +1-770-331-4443, dqaqish@knowlagent.com; investors, Scott Liolios or Ron +Both, both of Liolios Group Inc, +1-949-574-3860, scott@liolios.com
Web site: http://www.ucn.net/
http://ucn.net/safeharbor
http://www.knowlagent.com/
